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Wednesday, March 15, 2017

'We Are Story'

Richard Wagamese completed his
life journey last week, leaving behind the only thing any of us leave: his
story.

It is a brilliant, inspiring
story. A homeless street kid fights alcoholism and the torments of being born
Indian to become one of Canada’s most important writers.

Wagamese, 61, died Friday, March
11 at his home in Kamloops where he had lived for the past 10 years. He was
born at Wabaseemoong (Whitedog) First Nation near
Kenora, Ont. but was taken from his parents by the Childrens’ Aid Society and
raised in foster homes.

Wabaseemong is one
of the two Ojibwe aboriginal communities ravaged by health and social ills
created by mercury poisoning from a pulp and paper mill.

His parents were
residential school survivors deemed incapable of looking after him. When he was
a teenager he took to the streets and at age 16 stumbled into a library in St.
Catharines where he developed a passion for reading and began teaching himself
to write.

He returned to his
reserve roots at age 24 and became a journalist, landing a spot at a native
newspaper in Saskatchewan. He became a columnist for the Calgary Herald,
winning a National Newspaper Award in 1991.

Wagamese began
writing books, achieving wide acclaim for his two most recent novels, Indian Horse and Medicine Walk. Indian Horse,
the story of a residential school boy who finds hope in hockey but despair in
racism, is in production as a movie.

How a tormented
street kid with a Grade 9 education could teach himself to write with such
powerful simplicity is both mysterious and inspirational.

Here is an example
taken from Indian Horse:

“We were hockey
gypsies, heading down another gravel road every weekend, plowing into the heart
of that magnificent northern landscape. We never gave a thought to being
deprived as we travelled, to being shut out of the regular league system. We
never gave a thought to being Indian. Different. We only thought of the game
and the brotherhood that bound us together . . . . We were a league of nomads,
mad for the game, mad for the road, mad for ice and snow, an Arctic wind on our
faces and a frozen puck on the blade of our sticks.”

No big, showy words. No sledgehammer sentences
designed to pound a judgment into readers’ heads. Just simple words evoking
powerful thought. Writing that is clean and humble. Exquisite.

Wagamese was believed to have suffered Post
Traumatic Stress Disorder from his childhood, and fought alcoholism on and off
throughout his life. In 2011 he pleaded guilty to three impaired driving
charges, which court was told occurred during a two-week binge. He was
sentenced to house arrest and banned from driving for 10 years.

The best advice he said he ever received was from Norval
Morrisseau, the Ojibwe ‘Picasso of the North,’ who told him to “work for the
story’s sake.”

“When I work for the story’s sake I leave my ego
at the door and the energy of the story emerges without my interference,”
Wagamese once said. “. . . because me and my ego are not in the way of the
story pouring outward.”

For me, the best words Wagamese ever wrote were
not in one of his novels. I found them on his former website some years back,
wrote them down and still keep them at my desk:

“All that we are is
story. From the moment we are born to the time we continue on our spirit
journey, we are involved in the creation of the story of our time here. It is
what we arrive with. It is all we leave behind. We are not the things we
accumulate. We are not the things we deem important. We are story. All of us.
What comes to matter then is the creation of the best possible story we can
while we’re here; you, me, us, together. When we can do that and we take the
time to share those stories with each other, we get bigger inside, we see each
other, we recognize our kinship – we change the world, one story at a time…”